Blog Archives

So this is late, but I hope you guys had wonderful holidays. I spent most of mine sick. It sucked 😦

Yes, it’s been a LONG time since I last posted here. I had all these grand ambitions and even wrote a list of topics I was going to blog about after crossing over from unpublished to published author.

It’s funny how life catches up with you.

A few administrative things:

There will be print copies of Communion (that’s right, get excited).

I will posting my sales stats from Oct. to Dec. soon.

There will be a sequel to Communion, at least two if I have my way. The working title for book 2 is Integral.

When I started writing this post a few days ago, I only had a basic (VERY basic) list of ideas for Integral. Right now I’m toying with which social issue to address in Integral.

For those of you who have read Communion, the “moral” my character learns is the best way to handle his bullies is to have a group of good friends. Of course, Les learns this in the hardest way and after several loses.

I’ll be doing more research all weekend to nail a new issue down and I plan to begin the first draft as early as February.

I need to a break from the marketing madness and spamming my Twitter account (it’s only for the next few weeks, I promise).

Did anyone see last night’s episode of Sleepy Hollow?

I’m still not sure how I feel about the show. I LIKE Ichabod and Abbie’s chemistry. And I LIKE Ichabod’s dialogue and overall wit. But there show has a very unrealistic feel to it. So many broken rules in regard to police policy. And there are other factors that seem kind of absurd, like the fact Ichabod is still wearing his 18th century gear.

Very few people want to cheer for a villain. And that’s how bloodsucking vampires are traditionally seen.

But somewhere in the literary evolution of the monster, vampires have become heroes. But how can a creature who feeds on innocent people be seen as heroic?

It’s not so bad if they don’t feed on the innocent, right?

Lestat, the central character of Anne Rice’s novels, one day decides he’s only gonna feed on criminals. In the readers mind, this isn’t so bad. Why, it’s even heroic! Good for Lestat for taking the law into his own hand and making those fiends suffer. Ever see the show Dexter? Dexter Morgan, the homicidal murderer with a sense of justice primarily kills other criminals, and we all love him.

I’ve mentioned before Anne Rice’s vampires even save the world in Queen of the Damned. But as soon as the threat is over, Lestat and the others return to murdering at least one human a night, reclaiming their status as the top predator of the human race. These vampires even create an island for themselves filled with high art and luxury shopping centers to draw humans in. But as long as their only feeding on criminals, who cares right?

One of the most consistent traits of a vampire, regardless of who is writing them is “the thirst.” The penalty for disobeying this ranges from fatigue to psychotic episodes. With an urge so powerful, it’s almost noble for a vampire to limit their diet to the people we don’t want in society.

What if the vampires don’t have a thirst?

In Communion, I play around with morality a lot. For one, I remove the THIRST for human blood. My Dhampir still require human blood to use their superhuman abilities. But, rather than having a thirst that would constantly drives them to feed, each of my Dhampir makes a conscious choice rather or not they will feed on a human.

As I mentioned in the previous post, some authors escape this problem by having their vampires not feed on human blood at all. In my next post, I look at other alternate food sources authors have used.

(P.S. In this post, I refer to criminals in a sarcastic, crass manner. Let’s remember everybody, vampires aren’t real. And, if they were, any lives they take (whether innocent or criminal) would be a problem.)

I’ve heard good things about the cover for Communion. The job of a book cover is to draw the reader’s attention so, out of all the other books they’re looking at, the reader picks up yours. But once they pick it up, it’s the back cover summary that should convince them to open up the first page.

Here’s what I have for Communion:

“Lester Fuller knows isolation well. It has been his only friend since Jadarius Singleton humiliated him last year. But one night after Jadarius’s taunts go too far, Lester stumbles upon Gwynn’s body. He’s sure she’s dead. Until she bites him.

Vampires are extinct. There are only the dhampir.

Now something more than human, Lester struggles to determine where he fits in this new society. Just what secrets about the dhampir are his new friends keeping from him? And what will he do when a notorious figure from dhampir history sets her eyes on him?”

This has gone through several iterations. Most recently, I took out the buzzwords, such as bullying. Bullying plays a heavy role in Communion. Jadarius is Lester’s bully. Lester first meets Camellia because she’s a school psychologist who specializes in bullying.

But because bullying is thrown around so much in stories and in society nowadays, I didn’t want it to be used in the summary. Instead I used words like “isolation”, “humiliation”, and point out Lester’s lack of friends. What do you think? Should our books’ back cover summaries use buzzwords?

With Communion in the hands of Beta-readers and my most recent project Sparkle ready to be published on Wattpad later this week, I’m not sure what I should write next. Although, it will likely involve vampires.

To give a little bit of background about myself, I always told myself I would NEVER write a vampire story. Then I worked on a story called Lamia’s Dream, which uses succubi. My succubi drain a person’s emotional energy, kind of like a psychic vampire. While on break from that story, I wrote Communion, which centers around creatures called dhampir.

Now I can’t get enough of the blood suckers and I’m thirsty for another vampire story. To figure out where I should go with vampires next, it’d be helpful to know what’s been done with the night time terrors before.

Here are some common vampire storylines:

Romance: A female (usually human) and a male (usually vampire). In Lamia’s Dream, I tried to switch it up by having a human male and female succubus pairing.

Love slave: This falls under romance, except the human (usually female) is a slave to the vampire.

Revenge: Vampires killed the protagonist’s family. Now the protag is gonna make those fang faces pay!

Vamp/Human Hybrid: Protag is has a vampire parent and human parent. Is often a vampire hunter.

Rebellion: The vampires are the reigning authority and someone has the stop them.

Horror: In the spirit of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the humans have no special abilities but have to fight a supernatural foe.

Comedy/Parody: Some vamps just wanna stay out of trouble, but trouble has a way of finding them!

Coming of age: This one also isn’t vampire specific. But a younger vampire “grows up” (so to speak) to become a more mature vampire.

Fledgling: This is like the coming of age story. But it usually focuses on the human who was first turned into a vampire and they’re struggle to adapt. Communion would fall under this category.

This list isn’t meant to be all-inconclusive. In fact, I might be missing some. Can you think of any other examples of the vampire storylines?

This cover was designed by the amazing Jason Alexander from Expert Designs. Here’s the testimonial I wrote:

“I had a concept in mind that I thought was perfect for my book, but other artists I had previously worked with had problems bringing it to life. I checked out Expert Subjects based on a referral from a friend. I got to work with Jason who nailed the basic concept down on his first try.

After some minor tweeks to background and size, the book cover of my dreams was ready to go to the voting stage with two others Jason had come up with himself. Turns out the voters preferred both the images Jason came up with to my own idea by a landslide. When showing friends and family to get them to vote, I saw their eyes light up when they saw his covers. Can’t beat that!

It was truly a pleasure working with Jason. He was patient and responsive and clearly had the better idea.”